Using Hadoop and SAS® for network analytics to build a customer-centric telecom service

When customers turn on their mobile phones they expect – or demand – good service. Providing numerous services on a distributed network throughout large geographical areas requires sophisticated analytics to monitor service quality and performance.

Our goal was to analyze growing volumes of network and customer data with greater speed, in seconds instead of minutes, accelerating the decision-making process. Hadoop and SAS have provided that ability.

OTE Cosmote, the largest mobile and wireline fixed-network operator in Greece, has expanded its relationship with SAS to strengthen its service quality and benchmarking, customer experience and service-performance capabilities for both its mobile and wireline fixed network. SAS for network analytics facilitates analyzing and visualizing huge amounts of network and customer data quickly and efficiently, helping OTE Cosmote deliver the best customer experience and remain a leader in the Greek telecommunications market.

Konstantinos Vlahodimitropoulos, Service Quality and Technology Management Director at OTE Cosmote, explains the project developed with SAS that combines analytics with the Hadoop storage system. He highlights the benefits of network analytics and data visualization in a business revolutionized by the emergence of mobile devices.

The telecommunications landscape is undergoing a period of profound transformation. What are the main challenges and opportunities for communications service providers?

The proliferation of smartphones has dramatically changed the telecommunications market as well as the user lifestyle. Today people communicate, build relationships and execute transactions on their mobile devices. For telecommunications companies, the new scenario represents a complex challenge and a major opportunity at the same time. The key challenge is to ensure the continuity and quality of service provided through the broadband networks. Customers have high expectations from network efficiency and user experience. The progressive erosion of margins is a critical point for telecommunications companies, so the need for savings keeps growing. OTE Cosmote is extremely focused on reducing operating costs, and investments are weighted to avoid wasting money and to maximize returns.

How can SAS for network analytics help telecommunications companies to gain competitiveness in the new scenario?

Analyzing big data is crucial to anticipate customer needs, ensure loyalty and prevent churn. Data visualization allows us to deliver relevant information to the users with drill-down ability and self-service reporting. At OTE Cosmote, the main need was updating the outdated data warehouse architectures with innovative and agile solutions. Our goal was to analyze growing volumes of network and customer data with greater speed, in seconds instead of minutes, accelerating the decision-making process. Hadoop and SAS have provided that ability.

What are the main areas the solution is addressing, and who are the main users?

SAS for network analytics was deployed in our product management department to gain valuable insights on service quality for mobile service and performance monitoring for fixed-line networks. This includes customer experience management initiatives to discover how services are used by each customer, and to gain additional insights and drill down to detailed activities to quickly discover and address customer concerns. For example, a particular project focused on the broadband measurements obtained through drive tests and the Ookla Speedtest app by OTE Cosmote users themselves. In addition to improving service quality, OTE Cosmote is using SAS for network analytics for competitive benchmarking across geographical areas, for performing advanced root-cause analysis of selected incidents and managing faults, and for monitoring and analyzing crucial network KPIs.

What benefits are you seeing?

Using SAS and Hadoop, OTE Cosmote provides competitive service levels and compelling marketing messages. Through our technology investments, we’re seeing increased speed of analysis, reduced from minutes to seconds, on increasing volumes of data; accelerated decision making; and the opportunity to access reports independently, with an immediate, detailed view. Previously, the reporting was time consuming and required significant IT support. Today business users can easily explore relevant data on their own, without taking time away from the IT department.

How will OTE Cosmote use analytics in the future?

The next step will be the adoption of the SaaS model for SAS technologies to quickly extend the solutions to other countries within the OTE group, taking advantage of big data cost-efficient scalability.

Benefits

Business users can access reports quickly and independently, without involving the IT department.

OTE Cosmote strengthened its service quality and better understands its customers.

The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.